~
As Nikki drives away, the enormity of what I’ve lost and of what I’m leaving behind hits me with as much force as Alex’s blow. I’ve lost my dignity, my self-respect and my confidence. I’m not just abandoning my dream, my home and my husband, but also part of my identity. Not for the first time in my life, I feel as if half of myself has gone. I’ve spent all my adult life coping with being a ‘twinless’ twin. And now I’m a wife with no husband.
I can hardly breathe or speak until we turn onto the M6. Then the knot in my stomach loosens a little. I have Chloe, I keep saying to myself, over and over again. I can feel the tension lift ever so slightly from my stiff shoulders and at the same time my eyelids become heavy. There’s a lot I want to talk to Nikki about, but I’m mentally and physically exhausted. I allow my eyes to close, intending to rest for a moment. I don’t want to sleep. It wouldn’t be fair to Nikki. Besides, I don’t know if I can trust her completely. She’s put my dad’s address into the satnav, but I want to check she stays on the right road.
The next thing I know, Nikki is calling out to me.
‘Kaitlyn? Wake up, Kaitlyn.’
‘Where are we?’ I ask just as my sleepy eyes spot a sign for Gloucester Services. Then, reading the time on the digital clock on the dashboard, I add, ‘How long have you been driving?’
‘We’ve done a good three hours of the journey now,’ Nikki says. ‘I could do with some coffee to wake me up a bit. Otherwise, I’ll fall asleep, too.’
Her words chill me.
‘Wake up and smell the coffee,’ I whisper. ‘Or wake up and smell the dead flowers.’
Biting her lip, Nikki pulls into a parking space. I can see she has heard me. She wraps her arms around the steering wheel, and resting her cheek on her hands, she fixes me with her large chocolate eyes.
‘Were you responsible for that parcel?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’ It’s no more than a whisper.
‘And you delivered it yourself?’
‘Yes,’ she repeats.
‘But weren’t you scared you’d get caught? We could have seen you!’ Without meaning to, I’ve raised my voice and Chloe starts to stir in the carrycot on the back seat of the car.
‘I always rang the house first. To make sure no one was in.’
At first, I think she means the doorbell. Then I get it. The calls to the landline. They were from Nikki. When I answered, she didn’t say anything. She was hoping no one would pick up, checking there was no one home. I remember hearing the phone ring while I was imprisoned in the nursery. She called today before coming out to the Old Vicarage, I realise.
‘But why did you deliver poppies and violets? I don’t get it. And that message? What the hell was that supposed to mean?’
‘It was just to … I wanted to … I suppose my aim was to freak Alex out. I didn’t want him to do the same thing to you and your daughter.’
I take a few seconds to process this. Then I ask, ‘The same thing? Are you talking about Melanie, Alex’s ex-wife?’
‘Yes. Melanie and the girls.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘I have no proof,’ she says, ‘but I think he killed them.’
I inhale sharply. Chloe begins to whimper. ‘What makes you think that?’ I ask.
‘He planted poppies and violets under the damson tree in the back garden. They didn’t grow. So then he planted daffodils. They died, too.’
Smell the dead flowers.
A series of images plays through my head, like in the trailer of a film. St Oswald’s church. William Wordsworth’s gravestone. Alex. Dora’s field. The Coffin Trail. I remember that day as clearly as if it were yesterday. The day we saw Nikki walking her little white dog.
‘Wordsworth planted daffodils as a memorial to his favourite daughter when she died,’ I say.
Nikki nods gravely. ‘It’s just a theory,’ she says, ‘but once I’d come up with that scenario, I couldn’t get it out of my head.’ She shrugs, seemingly less sure of herself all of a sudden. ‘Maybe I wanted to make Alex into more of a monster than he really is so I could get over him. I don’t know. But I figured something bad had happened to Poppy and Violet, so I cut up thirteen flowers––’
‘Why thirteen? To bring bad luck?’
‘No! That’s how old they would be now.’
‘And you added dirt,’ I say. ‘What was that about?’
‘It was earth.’ I narrow my eyes at Nikki. I’m not sure if she’s telling the truth. None of this makes sense. ‘To let Alex know someone was on to him in case I was right and he had buried them all under that wonky damson tree.’
‘But Alex isn’t capable of … murder!’ As I utter these words, I wonder if I’m conditioned to stand up for Alex, even when he commits the most atrocious acts. ‘Is he?’ I add weakly. Would he kill someone? Could he kill someone? His own family?
I can feel Nikki shrug next to me as I shudder. Chloe starts to cry. She must be hungry. Her evening feed is long overdue. I look at Nikki. She sits up straight and avoids my gaze. I don’t believe her.
Then I remember a day about a month before the wedding, the day Alex and I met the Superintendent Registrar to give notice of our intention to marry. The officer was irritable because Alex had forgotten his divorce papers. Alex went back with them later. Is it possible he handed in a death certificate instead? Would he have a death certificate if no body had been found because his wife is buried under the damson tree? Maybe he provided false documents. I wouldn’t put it past him.
I open the car door and get out on shaky legs. Leaning against the car, I’m vaguely aware of Nikki getting out of the car and taking Chloe out of her carrycot. I hear her soothing Chloe and her words soothe me a little, too.
I desperately need a pee and this primal need enables me to function in spite of the state I’m in. I take the baby bag and Nikki carries Chloe and we walk towards the entrance of the motorway services side by side in silence.
Inside, I make up a bottle of formula and Nikki starts to feed Chloe while I race off to the loos. When I get back, I suggest we have something to eat. For the first time in several days, I’m famished.
‘Good idea,’ Nikki agrees. ‘Anything. As long as it comes with a double espresso.’
I order two plates of spaghetti bolognaise and two double espressos, but my card is declined. It’s a debit card. I haven’t spent any money recently, so I should have more than sufficient funds in my account. I have another card, a credit card, the one for our joint account, so I try that. But to my dismay, it doesn’t work either.
Leaving my tray by the cash desk, I have to ask Nikki to lend me the money. She gets up immediately and, handing me Chloe, she pays for our dinners.
‘I’m so sorry, Nikki,’ I say as soon as she comes back. I’m mortified. ‘You’ve driven all this way, I didn’t keep you company on the journey and I can’t even buy you a meal.’
I burst into tears. I’m aware that people are staring at me, but right now I just don’t care. I’ve shed so many tears recently, I should be all cried out by now, but I’ve got a feeling there’s a lot more to come.
Nikki places her hand on my arm. ‘Think nothing of it,’ she says. ‘I’ve deceived you terribly and I’m trying to make it up to you. You mustn’t feel you owe me anything. Not even dinner.’ She gives me a quick toothy grin and it makes me feel a bit better.
When I’ve calmed down and we’ve nearly finished eating, Nikki asks me, ‘Have you got any idea why your cards might have been refused?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s odd that neither of them work, though.’
‘They haven’t expired?’
‘Nope.’
‘You’ve definitely got money in your account?’
‘Funnily enough, I’ve been a bit too tied up to go on any spending sprees recently,’ I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. I bite my lip. ‘God, I’m sorry, Nikki. I’m tired and frustrated. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
‘No, that’s fine. You’ve been through a lot. Don’t worry about that.’
The way she says that seems to imply I should be worrying about something else entirely.
‘What? What is it?’
‘Do you remember I told you my mum paid the deposit for my house because I’d lost my money?’
A vague memory stirs in a recess of my mind.
‘Well, Alex stole all my money. I had a savings account but he said he had a high-interest account in some building society and persuaded me to transfer my money.’
My stomach lurches. The money from the sale of the house in Minehead. The house I used to live in with Kevin. I let Alex handle the money. He said he’d pay it into a building society.
‘Stupid of me, really,’ Nikki continues, ‘but we were engaged and I trusted him.’
‘Oh God.’
A wave of nausea suddenly rises inside me and I leap up, thrusting Chloe into Nikki’s arms. I dash to the toilets. There, I retch and retch until I’ve brought up everything I’ve just swallowed. When I’ve finished, Nikki appears juggling Chloe, two handbags and the baby bag in her arms.
‘How are you feeling now?’ she asks as I splash cold water on my face.
I look at her in the mirror, trying to keep my eyes on her and avoid looking at my own bruised ashen face. ‘Not great,’ I say.
‘It’s the shock, I expect.’
A plump middle-aged lady emerges from a toilet cubicle, accompanied by the noise of the flush, and washes her hands at the sink next to mine. She glances nervously at me in the mirror and when I glare at her, she looks away. I wait until she’s at the hand dryer before I turn to Nikki and tell her what I suspect happened to the money from the sale of my house.
‘You really must go to the police as soon as possible,’ she says as we make our way out of the loos and towards the exit. ‘Tell them that Alex beat you up, locked you up and emptied your bank accounts. They’ll protect you and Chloe.’
Alex is the father of my child. Somehow it seems wrong to report him to the police. But I suppose sometimes doing the right thing feels wrong and it has to be done anyway.
‘I will.’
We pass the chairs we were sitting in a few minutes ago. There’s a couple there now, holding hands across the table while steam rises from their styrofoam cups. They look happy and carefree. Nikki strides on towards the sliding doors and I almost have to run to keep pace with her even though she’s the one carrying Chloe and all the bags.
Once we’re back on the motorway, Nikki picks up the conversation from where we left off. ‘I didn’t report Alex for taking my money. I should have gone to the police, but … I don’t know, at first I was stupid enough to hope he might come back to me. That was what I wanted. I was completely … in love.’ Her voice cracks a little and a lump forms in my own throat.
‘Then I was ashamed,’ she continues. ‘I imagined telling the police, seeing them roll their eyes at each other, thinking how gullible and naive I’d been. We hadn’t even been together that long before we got engaged. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance.’
Now why doesn’t that surprise me?
In the half-light, I notice Nikki’s knuckles whitening as she tightens her grip on the steering wheel.
‘Then I thought maybe he’d threaten me,’ she continues, ‘although he’d never been violent when we were … together. Controlling, yes. Violent, no. Perhaps we simply hadn’t got to that stage.’
She pauses for a second, lost in her thoughts, maybe playing out a scene further along the road she’d have taken in a parallel universe. I wait without prompting her.
‘In the end, my mum said to leave it, that it was best to put it all behind me. She said it was a small price to pay for … for escaping from the bastard before it was too late. Sorry, Kaitlyn.’
‘No! Don’t be!’
We say nothing for a second or two. Then something occurs to me. I don’t like to ask Nikki how much money Alex took from her. But I know how much my half of the sale of the house in Minehead amounted to, and that in itself is already quite a large sum.
‘What the hell has he done with all that money? He’s not particularly materialistic. He inherited the Old Vicarage. He owns a successful shop. He earns a good living. What does he spend it on?’
Nikki turns and looks at me. ‘He doesn’t earn much. It’s not his shop,’ she says. ‘He just works there. And he didn’t inherit the Old Vicarage.’ Nikki pauses, her eyes fixed on the road as she pulls into the middle lane to overtake a van. When she has finished this manoeuvre, she resumes speaking. ‘Alex’s parents rented the Old Vicarage when they married. About fifteen years ago, when the owners decided to sell it, Alex bought it, but I think he’s always had difficulty paying the mortgage.’
‘He told me it had been in his family for years!’ I realise now Alex lied about the Old Vicarage and his job so there would be no question of him leaving the Lake District. I had to come to him. ‘How do you know all this?’ I ask Nikki.
‘His mother told me.’
I realise that I’ve never really talked to Sandy – apart from when she told me about Alex’s father. I’ve never tried to get to know her. I was put off by her obsession with cleanliness and jealous of her close relationship with Alex. She tried to help me with Chloe and I resented her for meddling. I should feel bad about that now, particularly given the support she showed me earlier today, but instead a solitary tear for my own mother rolls down my cheek.
‘I just wanted to say, if it helps, you can mention me,’ Nikki says, ‘to the police, I mean.’
I’m so choked up now I don’t trust myself to speak. I reach out and touch her shoulder.
Staring out of the window a few minutes later, I see a sign for Gordano Services. We’re near Bristol. Poor Nikki has done all the driving so far, I realise.
‘Stop at the services, Nikki, if you like,’ I say. ‘I’ll take the wheel from here.’
Nikki indicates and pulls off the motorway. As we get out of the car and swap sides, I ask her to lend me her mobile so I can ring my dad.
The home number for the house in Porlock, the house I grew up in, is one of the few I know by heart. I keep the call short. I don’t want to alarm Dad, but I can tell from his voice he’s worried. He must be wondering what our unexpected visit is all about. I promise Dad I’ll fill him in when we get there – or in the morning as we’re going to arrive very late.
Gripping my phone against my ear with my shoulder while I fasten my seatbelt, I glance at the satnav. If everything runs smoothly, I tell my dad, we’ll be there in a couple of hours’ time.